Thursday, April 29, 2004
Christ is Risen!
Apostles Jason and Sosipater of the Seventy
Kellia: Deuteronomy 1:19-25 Apostle: Acts 8:26-39 Gospel: St. John 6:40-44
Deuteronomy 1:19-25 RSV, especially vs. 25: "And they took in their hands some of the fruit
of the land and brought it down to us and brought us word again, and said, "It is a good land which the Lord our God
gives us." As one will see in reading the preceding verses of Deuteronomy (1:5-18), the call of God upon us is to possess
the inner land of the self, and requires interior cleansing and submission of the will to the rule of God. Like our forerunners
of the ancient covenant, we have met God at His Holy Mountain. Still, we are far more blessed than were the People of
ancient Israel who faced the Lord at Mt. Sinai, for we "have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned
with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who
heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore" (Heb. 12:18-19).
Rather, we have "come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable
company of angels, to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of
all, to the spirits of just men made perfect" (Heb. 12:22-23). We come from an encounter with God in the flesh, with the
Lord Jesus Christ Who came into the world to save sinners and not to condemn (Jn. 3:17). The whole of the New
Covenant known in the Church is incomparably finer and better. Still, let us learn from the type of those who preceded us
under the Old Covenant.
Even to reach the edge of the Promised Land, the People of ancient Israel had to pass through a "great and terrible
wilderness" (Dt. 1:19). We also know a spiritual wilderness only too well, where the passions assault and the cravings of
the body cry out for the satisfactions of this life (Num. 11:10-14). We, as did ancient Israel, encounter bickering, even
within the Church (Num. 12). Beloved of the Lord, listen to St. John of Kronstadt: "Our heart continually flatters us,
secretly exalting ourselves and depreciating others. But we must constantly see our innumerable sins in order to judge
ourselves, to weep over ourselves, as for the spiritually dead....laying aside all passions and every worldly care, and let us
stand....with faith and reverence, with understanding attention, with love and peace in our hearts." Such is the route before
us through the great and terrible desert of this present age and its clamorous appeals.
As we brave this passage of the desert in the Church with the guiding help of the Lord at each step, we shall reach the
borders of the Promised Land; we shall come to our Kadesh-barnea. Ahead is the unknown. Ahead is the struggle to
possess what God promises. The dark occupants will not surrender without a fight. Still, hear the Gospel message. Its
type is clearly stated for us in today's reading: "Behold, the Lord your God has set the land before you; go up, take
possession, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has told you; do not fear or be dismayed" (Dt. 1:21). The Risen Lord
stands in our midst saying these very words to us (Lk. 24:36-37).
Like the company of Israel at Kadesh-barnea, we have available to us glowing reports from many who have gone before us,
walked the Promised Land, taken its fruits, and held them up to us to behold with our own eyes (Dt. 1:25). St. John of the
Ladder, recognizing that we "lie in the deepest pit of ignorance, in the dark passions of this body and in the shadow of
death," nonetheless encourages us to consider the dispassionate man who has attained the Promised Land, who "while still
in the flesh, always has God dwelling within him as his Pilot in all his words deeds and thoughts," and "apprehends the
Lord's will as a sort of inner voice."
Lighten, O Lord, my supersensuous eyes, made blind by the gloom of sin. Anoint them, O Compassionate One, with
humility; wash them with the tears of repentance.